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GRAND JURY REPORTS: BALTIMORE CITY (Part I)
by Pat Melville
Printed copies of Baltimore City (Grand Jury Reports),
filed with the Criminal Court, exist for the years
1925-1964 at the State Archives in series C2790. The
documents contain the usual reports on criminal activity,
conditions in public facilities, and special
investigations.
In Baltimore City, each grand jury sat for a term of four
months, and during that time considered hundreds of
criminal charges. A 1944 report contained the remark: "As
in times past, we had the usual 'Three Musketeers' that
keep the law enforcing agencies busy - liquor, gambling
and vice."
Sometimes the jurors expressed opinions on the imposition
of punishments for crimes that now seem unduly harsh and
unforgiving. In 1926, the grand jury viewed prisons not as
places of reform, but as institutions for "the rigid
punishment of those who violate willfully and forcefully
the personal or property rights of another." The prisons
provided an environment ideal for learning new criminal
behavior. "We do not capture a wolf, or other predatory
animal, give it a comfortable home for a year or so, and
then turn it loose to re-enact its former depredations. We
make the public safe either by putting to death, or
incarcerate it permanently." Such drastic measures were
not advocated for all offenders. In 1935, a grand jury
committee recommended using the whipping post for some
unnamed minor offenses.
The grand juries visited the city jail, state prisons,
mental hospitals, and juvenile facilities located in the
city and surrounding counties. Any institution, public or
private, was subject to investigation as long as city
residents were committed there at public expense.
Inspection reports in 1925, for example, included the
House of Correction, Maryland Penitentiary, St. Mary's
Industrial School, City Jail
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Maryland School for Boys, Industrial Home for Colored
Girls, Maryland School for Girls, Bay View Asylum,
Maryland House of Reformation for Colored Boys, House of
Good Shepherd, Springfield State Hospital, Spring Grove
Hospital, Mount Hope Retreat, Crownsville State Hospital,
Melvale School for Colored Girls, and Montrose School for
Girls. The longest trip regularly undertaken was the one
to the House of Reformation for Colored Boys located in
Cheltenham in Prince George's County. Occasionally a
committee of jurors would travel to the State Penal Farm
in Hagerstown, that opened in 1942.
During World War II, some of the trips outside the city
ceased because of gasoline rationing and shortage of
available vehicles. The court tried to tell the grand
jury that it had no legal jurisdiction over institutions
in the counties and that past inspections were permitted
only as a matter of courtesy by the administrators. The
jurors felt obligated to visit any facility where
substantial numbers of city citizens were incarcerated
or committed at public expense. The jurors prevailed and
the inspections
continued.
Most inspection reports contained satisfactory remarks
about the institutions. Even when problems were
outlined, the jurors almost always commended the
personnel for doing the best job possible under the
circumstances. But, as one grand jury foreman remarked,
the more interesting reports described deficiencies. The
reform school in Cheltenham was the one facility that
fit the opposite pattern of having persistent problems
[a subject to be considered in a subsequent
article].
In 1938, a grand jury report described the locking
system at the city jail where all cell doors had to be
individually locked and unlocked by a tier guard. With
four sections of cells, each with five tiers, locking or
unlocking doors involved sixty-six steps in each
section. The potential for disaster in the event of an
emergency, such as a fire, was deemed
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